Reminiscences of Jackson's Old Division by Captain James M. Garnett
and Alexander Hunter, with Comments by Alex. Robert Chisholm.

Numbers Against General Lee---An Estimate that He Had but 35,000or
36,000 in the Conflict--Hungry Men Fought Bravely.
[From the Baltimore, Md., Sun, September 16-October 18, 1903.]

The approaching anniversary of the
battle of Sharpsburg, or Antietam creek, recalls vividly to mind the incidents of that
battle. It may be remembered by old soldiers that Jackson's Corps, consisting of his own
division, commanded by General J. R. Jones; Ewell's Division, commanded by General A. R.
Lawton, and A. P. Hill's Division, commanded by General A. P. Hill, had been detached to
capture Harper's Ferry, whose garrison consisted of 11,000 men under Colonel D. S. Miles.
Jackson was assisted by General J. G. Walker's
Division, which occupied Loudoun Heights, and General McLaws' Division, which occupied
Maryland Heights. There was some delay on the part of these troops in getting into
position, but all was ready by the afternoon of September 14. Jackson moved forward, his
command extending from the Shenandoah to the Potomac, in the following order from right to
left, A. P. Hill, Lawton and Jones.
The attack began early on the morning of
Monday, the 15th, and after brisk firing for an hour or more the white flag was displayed,
and the place, being completely surrounded, was surrendered by General Julius White, who
had returned from Winchester and joined Colonel Miles a few days before, Colonel Miles
having been killed by one of the last shots and General White having succeeded to the
command.

Battle of South Mountain

Meantime General McClellan, having
come into possession of a copy of General Lee's order of march, found at or near General
D. H. Hill's headquarters at Frederick, on September 13 (the responsibility for the loss
of which has not been settled to this day), had pressed forward much more rapidly than
usual and brought on (Sunday, September 14) the battle of South Mountain, or Boonsboro,
fought by General Lee to protect his trains and to enable General Jackson to rejoin him.
The Federals carried the passes of South
Mountain at Crampton's and Turner's Gaps, and General Lee drew up his army on the west
side of Antietam creek, north and south of the village of Sharpsburg, and in easy
communication with General Jackson by Boteler's ford, on the Potomac, near Shepherdstown.
As soon as the necessary arrangements for the
surrender of Harper's Ferry could be made on the 15th, General Jackson, leaving General A.
P. Hill at Harper's Ferry to complete these arrangements, marched that afternoon for
Shepherdstown with his own corps (Jones' and Lawton's Divisions) and Walker's Division,
and crossed the Potomac at Boteler's ford on the morning of the 16th. McLaws' Division,
with which R. H. Anderson's was serving, did not reach Sharpsburg until the morning of the
17th, and A. P. Hill's Division, with the exception of one brigade left at Harper's Ferry,
not until the afternoon of the 17th, after a march of seventeen miles, but just in time to
save the day against Burnside's attack.
General McClellan had placed his army in
position on the east side of Antietam creek by the night of September 15, and his failure
to attack on the 16th, when General Lee's army was still divided, was fatal to his
success.
This article must be limited to the operations
of Jackson's old division (J. R. Jones') on the extreme left, as the writer was a staff
officer of the "Stonewall Brigade" (Winder's), commanded by Colonel Andrew J.
Grigsby, of the 27th Virginia Regiment, and later in the day of the division, as Colonel
Grigsby succeeded to the command of the division after the stunning of General Jones by a
shell and the death of General Starke, commanding the Louisiana brigade.

Taking Post Near
Sharpsburg

After crossing the Potomac at Boteler's ford, on the afternoon of September 16, Tuesday, this division was marched to
the extreme left, through Sharpsburg and the woods around the Dunkard Church on the
Hagerstown turnpike, and took position in an open field to the left of the turnpike and in
front of these woods; that is, the "Stonewall" Brigade, or First Brigade, as it
was also known, commanded by Colonel Grigsby, in the open field, right resting on the
Hagerstown turnpike, the Second Brigade (Jones') prolonging the line to the left; the
Fourth Brigade (Stark's) at the edge of the woods, a short distance to the rear of the
First Brigade, right also resting on the turnpike, and the Third Brigade (Taliaferro's)
prolonging this line to the left.
The division fronted north and was subjected to
a cross-fire from the batteries in its front and from the heavy guns beyond the Antietam
on its right rear, which firing was kept up until late at night, but it did not do much
damage and served only as a fine display of pyrotechnics. The troops were wearied out with
their long march and were soon unconscious in profound slumber, notwithstanding the
cannon-firing. Colonel Grigsby and his staff secured a comfortable fence panel and were
soon imitating the men around them.
Their slumbers, however, were rudely broken
about daylight of the 17th by the renewal of the cannon-firing and the sound of musketry,
showing that the enemy were driving in our pickets, and leading to the correct inference
that the main attack was to be on our left.

Furious Attack Begins

It came at once and raged furiously
both on the right and left of the Hagerstown turnpike. Being on the left of that turnpike
I can speak personally only of what occurred on that side. Our two little brigades in the
front line, about 400 men, resisted as long as it was possible--I cannot remember just how
long--but presently Colonel Grigsby said to me: "Go to General Starke and tell him
that unless I receive reinforcements I cannot hold this line much longer." I hurried
back to the edge of the woods, found General Starke (General J. R. Jones having been
stunned by the explosion of a shell very early in the morning and carried off the field),
and delivered the message.
The words had barely escaped my lips when I saw
the front line falling back and said to General Starke: "There they are, coming back
now, General." He immediately ordered the Louisiana Brigade and Taliaferro's Brigade
to rise and move forward, which they did in gallant style at a right oblique, and he
himself led them, but he had not more than reached the fence along the Hagerstown road
when he fell, "pierced by three musket balls and survived but an hour." Colonel
William Allan rightly says: "He was greatly beloved by his men as a brave and
chivalrous leader." (Allah's Army of Northern Virginia in 1862, page 386,
note.)

Rallied by Colonel
Grigsby

Colonel Grigsby rallied the men of
the front line at the edge of the woods, where they resisted a while longer, those on the
left shooting from a ledge of rocks and some straw stacks in rear of a farmhouse. But
increasing numbers forced them from this position and all of the men that could be rallied
withdrew across a small stream and took position about half-way up the hill beyond, in
front of another farmhouse--Hauser's, I think it must have been--where they stayed.
The enemy came into the woods and even to the
ledge of rocks and straw stacks above mentioned, but did not venture across the little
stream.
About this time there was a lull in the
fighting on this part of the field, thus characterized by Colonel Allan (page 396):
"A comparative lull now succeeded the furious storm of the morning, while the
exhausted troops of both sides awaited the arrival of approaching reinforcements."
Meanwhile General Early's brigade had been
withdrawn from the support of the cavalry, which had been formed on a hill to the extreme
left-front of the infantry, and General McLaws' Division had reached the field on the
extreme right. Soon two of his brigades, Semmes' and Barksdale's, with G. T. Anderson's,
of D. R. Jones' Division, were seen marching by the flank in our front and in speaking
distance--for some of us hailed them and inquired what troops they were--and as soon as
they had cleared our line they faced to the right, were joined by Grigsby's remnants and
by General Early, who commanded his division after General Lawton was wounded, and the
enemy was driven out of the woods on that part of the field and across the Hagerstown
turnpike. I judge from accounts of the battle that these men were Sedgwick's Division,
both Hooker's and Mansfield's attacks having been repulsed, but I do not pretend to know
who the Federal troops were, as I am merely giving personal reminiscences of what took
place under my own eye.

Without Food Two Days

Soon after the woods were cleared
and our lines re-established, Colonel Grigsby was ordered by General Jackson to take the
division to the rear to recruit, as it had been much cut up and thrown into disorder, to
replenish their ammunition, to get something to eat, of which the men stood much in need,
for they had had nothing to eat since we left Harper's Ferry, two days before. I remember
distinctly that we retired to a farmhouse in the rear, where some salt bacon was issued to
us. In default of cooking utensils we cooked it before the fire on forked sticks, and I
never knew bacon to taste sweeter in my life; "hunger is the best sauce," says
the proverb.
After resting and collecting our men, we
returned to the field and were posted in support of the Rockbridge Artillery--old friends,
as it was attached to the "Stonewall Brigade," and the present writer had
formerly been a member of it. This battery was stationed on top of the hill from which we
had advanced to the last attack, and just above the farmhouse (Hauser's), in front of
which we had lain.
We remained here during the afternoon, when we
were moved to a piece of woods a short distance to our left and front, where we remained
all the next day (18th). We were expecting another attack all that morning until truces
were made for the burial of the dead, whether officially or informally I do not know, but
the burial of the dead by both sides went on in our front all that day. That night General
Lee withdrew his whole army quietly without loss, and even without attack, to the south
side of the Potomac, which was reached soon after sunrise the next morning (19th).

Numbers of Men Engaged

For an account of the battle on
other parts of the field the reader is referred to Colonel Allan's The Army of
Northern Virginia in 1862, and to General Palfrey's The Antietam and
Fredericksburg, the best accounts that this writer has ever read. The defect of
General Palfrey's otherwise fair book is that it seems impossible for him, as for other
Federal writers, to realize the small number of troops, compared to the number of General
McClellan's army, with which General Lee fought this battle. Colonel Allan says (page
380): "Lee's entire infantry force was under 30,000, to which should be added his
cavalry and artillery, commonly estimated at 8,000. The battle was thus fought by the
Confederates 'with less than 40,000 men,'" quoting from General Lee's report. Even
this allowance is an overestimate. The present writer investigated this subject a few
years ago in a controversy with a reviewer in The Nation (Nos. 1538 and 1543),
and came to the conclusion that the Confederate force in the battle of Sharpsburg numbered
35,000 or 36,000. The Nation declined to publish his letters, but they were
published in the Richmond Times of February 10, 1895. The reports of this battle
are given in War Records, Vol. XIX, Part 1. The reader may examine them for
himself.
The map in the War Records (plate No. xxix),
which is followed by General Palfrey, is erroneous in giving the Confederate second
position too far to the rear on the left. The line should be drawn about half-way between
the first position and that there given as the second position. (The map in Battles
and Leaders of the Civil War, Volume II, page 636, is more accurate.) None Of the
enemy ever came beyond the straw-stacks mentioned above, on the left, and very few of them
came even so far. Moreover, they were all driven from this position and beyond the
turnpike in the attack of McLaws' brigades, Early and Grigsby on Sedgwick, after whose
defeat, I might say rout, there was no more fighting on that portion of the line.
Grigsby's handful of men--men of Jackson's old division, who had been through the Valley
campaign, the Seven Days' battles around Richmond, Cedar Mountain and Second Manassas, and
had suffered severely in all, and who had already fought for several hours that morning,
would never have been sent to the rear to recruit if there had been further need for them
in front, but, as General Gordon said of his corps at Appomattox, they had been
"fought to a frazzle."
General J. R. Jones, commanding Jackson's old
division on the morning of September 17, reports this division of four brigades as
"not numbering over 1,600 men at the beginning of the fight," and its casualties
as "about 700 killed and wounded" (War Records, Volume XIX, Part 1,
page 1008). This is a very heavy loss--nearly 50 per cent., of which Taliaferro's and
Starke's brigades suffered most when Starke led them forward to his death and they were
exposed to both a front and a flank fire. Dr. Guild, chief surgeon of the army, reports
"the killed and wounded of the whole army at 10,291" (War Records, Volume
XIX, Part 1, page 813), or almost 30 per cent. This was one of the greatest battles of the
Army of Northern Virginia, and there was glory enough for all.

JAMES M. GARNETT.

Battle of Antietam

The recent discussions of the battle
of Antietam, Sharpsburg, as we call it, in the columns of The Sun, have been of
great interest to the participants in the battle. The incidents of the campaign of '62 are
as fresh in my memory as if they happened yesterday instead of forty-one years ago.
General Lee was asked after Appomattox by a
prominent lady in Alexandria which battle he felt most proud of, and he answered:
"Sharpsburg, for I fought against greater odds then than in any battle of the
war."
I doubt if any army on earth ever endured
greater hardships or went through more than Lee's army in the late summer and early fall
of 1862.
On August 18 of that year our brigade, composed
of the First, Seventh, Eleventh and Seventeenth Virginia Infantry, set its faces northward
from Gordonsville. Every knapsack and all camp equipage were left behind, and in light
marching order, with 60 rounds of ammunition, a blanket over our shoulders and five days'
rations in our haversacks, we headed for the Rapidan river. Those five days' rations,
which lasted us two days, were the last we drew until September 21.
The forced marches of August 28 and 29 to aid
Jackson were a fearful ordeal, made as they were in the intense heat, with the roads deep
in dust, but we reached Thoroughfare Gap in time, and the next day we fought the second
battle of Manassas. Our men were so hungry that they gathered the crackers and meat from
the haversacks of the dead Federals and ate as they fought. The next day we kept on to
Chantilly and fought there; then, swinging to Leesburg, we struck for the Potomac. In all
these weeks we had no change of clothing and we were literally devoured by vermin. We had
no tents and slept on the ground, and slept soundly even though the rain was pouring in
torrents. A prize fighter trains about two months to get himself in perfect condition, but
we had been training in a more vigorous manner for nearly two years, and the men were
skin, bone and muscle.
We lived on apples and green corn all of the
time, and the soldiers began to drop out of the ranks at every halt. Then an order came
for the barefooted men to remain behind and report in Winchester, and some thousands threw
away their shoes. Every step our army made northward it became weaker. At last we stood on
the long-dreamed-of banks of the Potomac. It was near Shepherdstown, and Maryland, my
Maryland, met our gaze at last, which shone--

Fair as the gardens of the Lord
To the famished eyes of the rebel horde.

With a rush and a swing we passed
through the "royal" city of Frederick, where we got scant welcome, up
the dusty broad pike northward to Hagerstown, where the people received the ragged
"Rebs" as if they were belted knights, with victory on their plumes. Here every
soldier got as much as he could eat. Then there came the long roll and we fell into ranks
and sorrowfully turned our faces southward, and went with a swinging gait toward the
mountains to help D. H. Hill. We reached Crampton's Gap after the fight was over, then
retraced our steps, and on the morning of the 14th of September halted on the fields of
Boonsboro, tired--and oh, so hungry. Apples and corn, corn and apples, were our only fare;
eating them raw, roasted, boiled together and fried, they served to sustain life, and that
was all.
That evening the battle of Boonsboro was
fought. Our position was in a cornfield, and we held our line intact after repeated
assaults. The next day we rested and gathered more corn and apples, and that night we
marched until the Great Bear had reached its zenith in the heavens, and at dawn on the
fateful morning of September 17th we reached the little village of Sharpsburg, and,
forming in line of battle just on the right of where the National Cemetery is now located,
we lay down and slept like logs, though the fight at the Dunkard Church on our left was
raging in all its fury.
We moved several times in the course of the
day, but at noon the final position was selected behind a post-and-rail fence near where
we first stopped. The order to halt was given, the line formed, and the command to stack
arms rang out. I was the only private left of Company A, Seventeenth Virginia, and, having
no comrade to lock bayonets with, I ran mine into the ground. The only officer left in my
command was Lieutenant Tom Perry. A mild-mannered, slow-speaking man was Tom, but he was a
soldier, every inch of him. He never made a boast in his life, but in every battle in
which the Seventeenth was engaged, there, in front of his company, stood Tom, calm and
serene, as if waiting for the dinner-horn to blow.
Longstreet's old First Brigade--that which
charged through the abattis at Seven Pines, 2,8oo strong--mustered only 320 men. The
Seventeenth Virginia, the pride of Alexandria, Prince William, Fairfax, Fauquier and
Warren counties, which at Blackburn's Ford had 860 men in ranks, now stood in their tracks
with 41 muskets and 7 officers. My! my! What a set of ragamuffins they looked! It seemed
as if every cornfield in Maryland had been robbed of its scarecrows and propped up against
that fence. None had any underclothing. My costume consisted of a ragged pair of trousers,
a stained, dirty jacket; an old slouch hat, the brim pinned up with a thorn; a begrimed
blanket over my shoulder, a grease-smeared cotton haversack full of apples and corn, a
cartridge box full and a musket. I was barefooted and had a stonebruise on each foot. Some
of my comrades were a little better dressed, some were worse. I was the average, but there
was no one there who would not have been "run in" by the police had he appeared
on the streets of any populous city, and would have been fined next day for undue
exposure. Yet those grimy, sweaty, lean, ragged men were the flower of Lee's army. Those
tattered, starving, unkempt fellows were the pride of their sections--

Whose ancestors followed
Smith along the sands,
And Raleigh around the seas.

About noon we were ordered to fall
in, and in a few moments Toombs' skeleton brigade took position on the left overlooking
Antietam bridge. Burnside had commenced his attack. Just at this moment a battery dashed
by us--the Rockbridge Artillery--and I had only time to wave my hand at my old
school-fellow, Bob Lee, a private in the battery, the son of our Commander-in-Chief, when
it disappeared down the hill.
And then Toombs got to work in earnest. No
words can describe the gallant fight he made to keep Burnside from crossing the bridge.
Again and again he drove back the blue columns, and with nothing behind him for support.
Those Georgians fought on until their gun barrels were too hot for the naked hands.
On our left it seemed as if Hades had broken
loose. The volumes of musketry and noise of the artillery were mingled in one vast roar
that shook the earth, and this kept up for nearly two hours. The whole of our front and
left was wrapped in an impenetrable cloud of smoke. Then came a lull, and I was sent to
the village with canteens to get water. I had a clear view from the steeple of a church
which I climbed, and then hurried back and said to Colonel Corse, of my regiment: "We
are lost, Colonel; we haven't a single reserve."
"Is it possible?" he said.
I told him it was a fact; there was not a
solitary Confederate soldier in sight. He clenched his teeth like a bulldog, and as the
news ran along the line each man knew we had to stay there and, if needs be, die there.
As we lay there waiting for the attack that all
knew must come, every man in the ranks wondered why it was delayed; I had seen from my
perch in the town, that there was a great force of Federals near Burnside bridge, and that
our thin line could not stand long against a determined attack. Our attention was given to
the fighting on our left, which had broken out with redoubled fury. About 3 P. M. we
received a shock, for the remains of Toombs' Georgians came tearing down the hill, and
then all the batteries across the bridge opened and swept the hill where we were lying.
Every one of our batteries limbered up and returned, leaving the single line of infantry
to brave the storm.
In about half an hour it came. Then the
artillery was silent, and the infantrymen, who had lain there face downward, exposed to
the iron hail, now arose, placed their cartridge boxes in position, rested their muskets
on the lower rail, and with clenched teeth, fast beating hearts and hurried breath, braced
themselves for the shock. The fence was not built on the top of the hill, but some fifty
feet from the crest; consequently we could not see the attacking force until they were
within pistol shot of us. We could hear the rat-a-plan of their drums, the stern commands
of their officers, the muffled sound of marching feet.
Colonel Corse gave but one order--"Don't
fire, men, until I give the word." As we lay there with our eyes ranging along the
musket barrels, our fingers on the triggers, we saw the gilt eagles of the flagpoles
emerge above the top of the hill, followed by the flags drooping on the staffs, then the
tops of the blue caps appeared, and next a line of the fiercest eyes man ever looked upon.
The shouts of their officers were heard, urging their men forward. Less brave, less
seasoned troops would have faltered before the array of deadly tubes leveled at them, and
at the recumbent line, silent, motionless and terrible, but if there was any giving away
we did not see it. They fired at us before we pulled trigger and came on with vibrant
shouts. Not until they were well up in view did Colonel Corse break the silence, and his
voice was a shriek as he ordered:
"Fire!"
All the guns went off at once, and the whole
brigade fire seemed to follow our volley, and the enemy's line, sadly thinned, broke and
went over the hill. Every man in our line began to load his musket with frenzied haste.
Only three or four of the Seventeenth were shot, the fire of the enemy being too high.
We had barely loaded and capped the muskets
when the blue line came with a rush and we fired now without orders. Before we could load
a third time the two lines of battle of the Federals, now corn-mingled as one solid bank
of men, poured a volley into us that settled the matter. It killed or wounded every
officer and man in the regiment except five, of whom I was fortunate enough to be one.
Just as the bluecoats were climbing the fence I
threw down my musket and raised my hand in token of surrender. Two or three stopped to
carry me back to the rear. The rest kept on, urged by their officers, in the direction of
the village of Sharpsburg.
Major Herbert and Lieutenant Perry made a dash
for the rear and escaped. I and a private named Gunnell, of the Fairfax Rifles, were the
only prisoners; the rest of the regiment lay there motionless in their positions. The men
were either lying down or kneeling--the wounds were dangerous or deadly. But for the
protection afforded by the fence I do not believe that a single man of the regiment would
have escaped alive.
In conversation with Doctor Macgill, of
Hagerstown, Md., shortly after the war, he told me that two days after the battle he
visited the spot, having had some friends in the Alexandria regiment of Kemper's brigade,
and that the fence was literally a thing of shreds and patches.
Our captors hurried us off. When we reached a
hill in the rear we stopped to rest. My guard said to me:
"It's all up with you, Johnnie; look
there." I turned and gazed on the scene. Long lines of blue were coming like the
surging billows of the ocean. The bluecoats were wild with excitement, and their measured
hurrah, so different from our piercing yell, rose above the thunder of their batteries
beyond the bridge. I thought the guard was right, that it was all up with us, and our
whole army would be captured. We, Yank and Reb, were sitting down taking a sociable smoke
when all at once we were startled as if touched by an electric shock. The air was filled
with bursting shells, as if a dozen batteries had opened at once from the direction of
Sharpsburg, and while we stood gazing we saw emerging from a cornfield a long line of
gray, musket barrels scintillating in the rays of the declining sun and the Southern
battle flags gleaming redly against the dark background. They seemed to have struck the
Federal advance on the flank. From the long line of gray a purplish mist broke, pierced by
a bright gleam here and there, and the noise of the volley sounded like the whirr of
machinery.
In an instant the whole scene was changed. The
triumphant advance, the jubilant shouts, the stirring beat of the drums, the mad, eager
rush of the forces in blue were stayed, and back they came, without order or formation,
and we joined the hurrying throng, not stopping until we reached the valley near the
bridge.
The attacking force was that of General A. P.
Hill. It was Stonewall Jackson who saved the Army of Northern Virginia from disastrous
defeat, as he had done at the first Manassas, at the seven days' battle at Richmond and
later on at Chancellorsville.
McClellan's dispatch to Burnside early on the
morning of the 17th to hold the bridge, "If the bridge is lost all is lost,"
made General Burnside overcautious. When he received orders to attack at noon he allowed
Toombs, with less than 400 men, to delay the crossing of the Ninth Corps for three hours.
Had Burnside followed Napoleon's tactics at Arcola, and rushed his men across the bridge,
he would have ended the war then and there, and been hailed by the North as the greatest
general of the New World.
I asked my captors what command our regiment
was engaged with. He answered Fairchild's New York Brigade. General Fairchild's report of
the battle shows what a fight that frazzle of the old First Brigade put up.
I have often been asked about the rebel yell. I
have always answered that we Rebs were savage with hunger, and men always "holier"
when hungry.

ALEXANDER HUNTER.
Washington, D. C., September, 1903.

-----

Comments by Alexander Robert
Chisholm.

The New York Herald, September
26, 1903, prints the following letter:

In your issue of September 21,
appears a letter from General Alexander Hamilton, in which he makes some very inaccurate
statements in praising the distinguished soldier, General George B. McClellan, who was so
suddenly replaced in command of a lately defeated army, which had confidence in him, thus
enabling him to fight what all fair minded writers have described as a great drawn battle
with the victorious army of General Robert E. Lee.
Hamilton states that "the great battle was
won in one day's fight, routing the late victorious enemy."
Brigadier-General Francis Winthrop Palfrey,
United States army, a friend of McClellan, writes in the Scribner Series Campaigns of
the Civil War, page 64:
"General Lee reported his forces as less
than 40,000, while his adjutant-general, Colonel Taylor, gives the exact number as
35,255;" and on page 65: "McClellan states in his official report that he had
87,164 men. Fourteen thousand of these, making a charge, were repulsed, staggered, reeled
and recoiled in great disorder."
On page 83, General Sumner writes:
"Hooker's Corps was not only repulsed, but
gone, routed, dispersed. General Ricketts, the only officer we could find, said that he
could not raise 300 men of the corps. Hooker had been wounded." On page 69:
"There were six corps and the cavalry
division of 4,320 men, in all 87,164 men. The First, Second, Ninth and Twelfth Corps did
most of the fighting. The Fifth and Sixth (page 120) lost less than 600 men, while the
total (page 117) loss in killed, wounded and missing was 12,469, which, with the exception
of the 600, fell upon the First, Second, Ninth and Twelfth Corps (page 69), which had
engaged a total of 56,614 men, McClellan reporting their loss as being 20 per cent."
General Hamilton states that "the
Confederate loss was more than 18,000 men (an absurd estimate), with great loss of cannon,
ammunition and colors; that they were routed at the bridge, which was held by
Burnside."
On page 116, Palfrey states:
"The truth is that the Confederate
batteries were extremely well taken care of by their infantry; as a rule they seldom lost
a gun." Colonel Long's Life of General Lee states:
"About 1 o'clock the battle on the left
ceased. The Federals had been repulsed at every point. Then Burnside with 20,000 fresh
troops forced the passage at the bridge and at the ford below. A. P. Hill, arriving with
4,500 men, delivered such destructive volleys that the Federals were forced to retire as
suddenly as they appeared, recrossing the Antietam. Thus closed the battle. General Lee
remained in position during the 18th prepared for battle." Finally, Palfrey writes,
page 119:
"Tactically the battle of the Antietam was
a drawn battle, with the advantage inclining slightly to the side of the Federals, who
gained some ground and took more trophies than they lost. The Confederates, however, held
most of the ground on which they fought, and held it not only to the close of the battle,
but for more than twenty-four hours after, and then retired unmolested and in good
order."
Whether intentionally or not, the omission of
all mention of General McClellan in the recent event at Antietam was most impolitic from a
military, political or social standpoint. He was the general in command. It was his
battle, and history will never permit a subordinate commander or any one else to steal the
glory. He acted wisely in not attacking Lee on the 18th, for his defeat would have been
certain. The position held was a strong one.